The rigtheousness of the CP

I'm feeling all self righteous tonight because I did my taxes a whole month before they are even due. Combined with the fact that I spent the weekend reorganizing several bookcases, cupboards, pantries, dressers and closets, end result is that I'm quite pleased with myself right now. (Note that I started to write this back in March, hence the reference to tax season.)

Feeling slightly superior to others is nothing new for me, however undeserved it may be. This all reminds me of the time I decided my young cousins needed to hear a few Old Testament Bible stories and that I was just the boy to take care of it for them.

My parents weren't big on church or religion, although they did require that all their children undergo the standard amount of indoctrination. The trouble for me is that by the time I was old enough for Sunday school we were living next door to the pastor of a fairly fundamentalist-style Lutheran church, and so in order not to be all snobbish or anything, it was his church we ended up attending.

My parents didn't attend Sunday school with me so they had no idea that I was not receiving the usual lessons and sermons on the spiritual benefits of tuna-noodle hot dish and church basement suppers. Instead, I was spending my early Sunday mornings learning all about the various behaviors that would get you sent to Hell ---with the occasional lesson on fearing black people thrown in for good measure. It was all just delightful.

I was quite impressed with all the fantastical Bible stories our teacher told us - all the more so because, according to everyone around me, it all "really happened!" God appeared to Moses as a burning bush and then parted the Red Sea so they could cross it! God told Noah to build an Ark and then had him bring two of every animal aboard! A snake told Eve to eat that damn apple which was the start of all our problems!

Cool!

At one point I received a plastic "Noah's Ark" set with the Ark, two of a bunch of your standard animals, and a plastic figurine of Noah. It was with this Ark that I attempted to indoctrinate my cousins.

One Sunday they were over at our house for dinner, so I brought them up to my room, set up the Ark set and then told them the story of how God appeared to Noah, told him to build a huge boat, made him gather up all these animals and then flooded the whole Earth, killing everyone but Noah, his family and the animals.

The best part is that after every fantastical moment of the story I would stop and say "Ok, now you believe it, right?" They would nod their heads and I would move on. I had to stop and spot check this because I knew that if they did NOT believe the story, they would burn in hell and then I would have no one to play with in Heaven.



I look back on this story today and laugh now. But when I take a step back and look at this stuff in the big picture, I find it remarkable how fucked up it is.

Wow.